It's not just the UK and US which have introduced smoking bans. Australia has followed suit, and the effect there is similar to that back home in Blighty. The difference is that Aussies are now spending less in rugby clubs (rather than pubs), according to a recent report.

The report found that while [rugby club] membership had increased by 25 per cent in the past five years, revenue was down.

The report found the drop in revenue was due to a number of challenges, including changes in gaming laws and the recent smoking ban.

So membership is up, but revenue is down. I conclude that Aussie rugby players are drinking and smoking less. This would appear to augur pretty badly for the future results of British rugby teams against the men from down under.

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Antismoking Lobbyists like to say that “Legitimate” studies show no harm to business from extremist smoking bans. They wave a set of studies up in the air, summarized, organized, paid for, and chosen by themselves of course, and claim that any contrary studies are somehow connected to “Big Tobacco.” Actually, the studies showing no harm are usually paid for from Antismoking grants and are specifically designed to show no harm. Those showing a loss in business are usually sponsored by the owners actually facing these losses! Prohibitionists like to lump together take-out and fast food chains with bars and restaurants to hide bar losses. But even with this blurring of statistics, it’s possible to see the real effects of smoking bans when one compares “Smoker-Friendly” states to “Smoker-Unfriendly” states. Antismokers point to a 6% growth in California’s hospitality trade between smoke-friendly 1990 and smoke-banned 1998. They’ll ignore the fact that trade growth in smoker-friendly states like North Carolina and Virginia was 77% and 57%… a growth over ten times greater! When one compares California’s figures to those of its bordering states a truly incredible figure emerges. While other factors may be partly responsible, the raw data indicates that California’s bans have actually cost it over one hundred billion dollars of such growth in the last 15 years!